MULTAN, Pakistan
(WOMENSENEWS)--Almost
two years after relatives
of a disgruntled suitor attacked
his family with acid and killed
two of his children, Daud
Aziz Siddiqi is still in deep
grief.

"I watched
her melt away day by day .
. . one day I woke up and
her ear was gone," Siddiqi
says of his hospital stay
with 18-year-old daughter
Rabia.

As he speaks,
his wife Tahira sobs beside
him. "If someone is shot
with a bullet, most times
there is surgery and then
it is gone. With acid the
pain just goes on and on and
on."

The attack occurred
early in the morning of July
23, 2002, as the Siddiqis,
their daughter Rabia, and
granddaughter, 4-year old
Khola, slept in the courtyard
of their Multan home. A father
of a suitor the Siddiqis had
declined as a mate for Rabia
scaled the wall and splashed
acid on the sleeping figures.

From within
the house another family member
heard their screams and ran
out to witness the attacker,
Zafar Siyal, fleeing.

When the Siddiqis
reached the hospital, the
skin had melted from Tahira's
back and right arm. Rabia
and Khola were more severely
disfigured.

In an attempt
to channel their agony the
Siddiqis are pursuing the
case in Pakistan courts and
speaking out in the national
media against a form of violence
that disfigures hundreds of
women every year in this South
Asian nation.

'Sharp Water'
in Urdu

They call it
"tezab," sharp water
in Urdu. Normally used for
agricultural purposes, nitric
and hydrochloric acid are
easily obtainable and all
too often turned into weapons
for men against women and
their families.

After confessing,
Siyal was found guilty in
December 2003 and assigned
punishment under Pakistan's
"Qisas" law which
calls for a perpetrator to
suffer the same fate as a
victim. The case is now under
appeals as Siyal attempts
to avoid the judge's assigned
punishment of having drops
of acid placed in his eyes.

Hundreds of
women every year fall victim
to acid attacks usually at
the hands of their husbands,
jilted suitors or other family
members. In 2002, 280 Pakistani
women died and 750 were left
disfigured by acid attacks
according to a Human Rights
Watch report issued last summer.

The majority
of attacks occur in rural
areas where tribal law dominates
and violence is common way
to settle disputes. In central
and southern Punjab province,
where Multan is located, cases
of reported acid attacks have
been steadily rising, from
nine in 2001, to 56 in 2002,
to 74 in 2003.

Sometimes the
attacked women are seeking
a divorce or the husband is
seeking a second wife over
the first's objections. Sometimes
the triggering event can be
as trivial as an argument
over grocery money.

Many Cases
Unreported

"Many cases
go unreported as most women
do not know their rights,
or the culprits take the victim
for medical treatment, claiming
it was an accident, and threaten
the victim or her children
if she speaks out" says
Wasim Muntizar, deputy coordinator
for the Centre for Legal Aid
and Settlement, a nongovernmental
organization in Pakistan that
helps defend and care for
impoverished people.

"Lawyers
usually have only the story
told by the victim, rarely
do any witnesses step forward
. . . thus the conviction
rate is well below 5 percent,"
Muntizar says. "Few cases
ever even get to the courts."

Especially in
smaller towns and villages,
where female literacy is often
only as low as 10 percent,
the way of life can keep acid-attack
victims out of public view.
Once past puberty, young women
are confined to their family's
walled compound. Often they
are forbidden from seeing
male relatives outside their
immediate family.

"It's not
that people don't care,"
Muntizar told Women's eNews.
"But rather that the
majority of these cases are
hidden away, quashed by the
more powerful families."

It's a horror
story Bushra Hali knows all
too well.

A couple of
years after getting married
her husband and mother-in-law
began repeatedly asking her
to procure 50,000 rupees ($900)
from her lower-middle class
family to help pay the bills.
Hali's family could not come
up with the money, but her
husband accused her of lying.

"I didn't
understand what they were
going to do, I never would
have believed they could do
such a thing," Hali recalls
of the morning nine years
ago when her mother-in-law
bound her hands behind her
back and began beating her.
Then her husband wrapped a
piece of cloth around the
top of a stick and dipped
it in liquid. After rubbing
it in her face he handed it
to his mother.

The last thing
Hali remembers of that day
is her mother-in-law bearing
down upon her with the stick
as her face began to burn.
Hali was so severely mutilated
that she was unable to speak
for a year and half. During
that time her in-laws sullied
her reputation saying that
she was having an illicit
affair with a man. Even Hali's
own relatives thought she'd
done something terrible.

Desperate to
avoid returning to her in-laws
house, Hali dropped her attempts
to prosecute her husband and
mother-in-law in return for
a divorce. In the process,
she lost access to her three
toddlers. She hasn't seen
them since the morning of
the attack.

"God only
knows what lies my children
have been told about their
mother," she laments.
"But I look like a monster.
I scare kids on the street,
how can I go back? How can
I find out if they have some
love left for their mother?"

Now, living
with her aging mother, Hali,
who has had 38 surgeries,
spends most of her time indoors,
wrapping her face tightly
in a large scarf when she
does leave the house.

"I die
10 times a day, and no one
realizes it. I am utterly
destroyed," she cries.

For the Siddiqis,
who have spent countless hours
learning about acid attacks
and their aftermaths, securing
a conviction against Siyal
is the only way to procure
some sort of justice for themselves
and survivors such as Hali.

Their worst
fear is that Siyal's lawyers
will hold down the case so
long in appeals, that eventually
he is freed. They have organized
demonstrations, spoken to
politicians and advertised
in national media to ensure
that doesn't happen.

"If it
was in my hands, every man
guilty of this crime would
be severely dealt with . .
. at the least, life in prison,
so that everyone knows that
this crime will be punished
under the law," says
Daud Aziz.